Hunters and Unicorns

DEAR FUTURE CRO | by Culture Crunch x GrowthQ - Elaine Mason

The team at Hunters and Unicorns is excited to announce their pop-up podcast collaboration bought to you by Culture Crunch and GrowthQ. Titled ‘Dear Future CRO’, we talk to dynamic and diverse sales leaders and listen to their advice for tomorrow’s CROs.

“Dear Future CRO, first, take bold risks on yourself and others. Second, be careful whose toes you step on today, they may be attached to the person you end up having to kiss tomorrow. Third, take each opportunity to learn, not only about the technical stuff but about the individuals and people you're working with because ultimately, we're in this game to be with other people, not to be with products or profit.”

Today we are joined by Elaine Mason, Senior Vice President of Purpose Strategy and Innovation at Cisco, to talk about her incredible career journey and how the chapters of her diverse experience and background in organisational development and change management have led her to her current role powering an inclusive culture at Cisco.

Listen to discover which aspects of Elaine’s journey provided the foundations for her upward career trajectory as well as vital strategies for progression in sales leadership roles as she speaks from her own experience on the benefits of creating a strong culture of sponsorship, mentorship, coaching and peer-to-peer connections within SaaS organizations.

DEAR FUTURE CRO | by Culture Crunch x GrowthQ - Debbie Mc Clure

Hunters and Unicorns Productions

Dear Future CRO - A Culture Crunch and GrowthQ collaboration

Join the GrowthQ Community: www.growthq.co

The team at Hunters and Unicorns is excited to announce their pop-up podcast collaboration bought to you by Culture Crunch and GrowthQ. Titled ‘Dear Future CRO’, we talk to dynamic and diverse sales leaders and listen to their advice for tomorrow’s CROs.

“Dream big. Take risks. And most importantly, be authentic to yourself.”

Today we are joined by, Debbie McClure, Vice President of Sales at Americas at Dropbox to discuss her incredible 30-year career trajectory from Sales Executive to Sales Leader.

Listen to this episode to discover Debbie’s experiences and personal journey through the ranks as she enlightens us with strategies for establishing a strong and sustainable career in sales and offers her advice on mentorship, sponsorship, skill translation, and the importance of diversity of perspective in today’s sales environment. Sharing both her triumphs and mistakes with our audience today, Debbie pays forward the mentorship she has received in her own career to support the next generation of revenue leaders.

Hunters and Unicorns | Playbook Universe - Marina Ayton #005

Welcome to Hunters and Unicorns: The Playbook Universe.

We’re here to showcase leaders within the Playbook Community and explore their formulas for success. We aim to uncover:

· What their non-negotiables were in propelling forward their career

· The importance of dynamic hiring

· The most effective methodologies utilised when scaling successful teams

Today we are joined by Marina Ayton, Regional Director for the Majors UK + Ireland for Zscaler. In this episode, we explore Marina’s formula for success both as an IC and as a leader. The last eight years have seen Marina surpassing 200% of her target consistently year or year and inspiring her teams to all hit the President’s club criteria.

Marina shares the importance of thinking BIG for her own ambitions and to that of her teams, and why challenging the status quo is imperative when driving your own career within the software sales space at any level. Whilst serving as a Regional Manager for AppDynamics during Cisco’s acquisition, Marina shares her professional experience and the importance of adaptability and agility.

Now at Zscaler, she discusses how hiring diverse teams, focussing on tenacity and revisiting the company vision with the team contributes to her success in building world class sales forces. Marina’s ability to articulate the importance of creating the right work environment where teammates feel safe to fail, illustrates why she and her team will keep on succeeding. This podcast uncovers how best to utilise the formidable playbook community network.

DEAR FUTURE CRO | by Culture Crunch x GrowthQ - Kat Salazar

The team at Hunters and Unicorns is excited to announce their pop-up podcast collaboration bought to you by Culture Crunch and GrowthQ. 

Titled ‘Dear Future CRO’, we talk to dynamic and diverse sales leaders and listen to their advice for tomorrow’s CROs. 

“Dear future CRO, your job is to create and lead cross-functional teams focused on revenue generation and that is a role that will always be evolving. And because of the rapidity of that evolution, more than any other leader, I would encourage you to invest in yourself and your teams by bolstering transferrable skills, which measurably bolster culture and strengthen financial performance because these skills encourage people to be better performers, hands down and predictably.” 

Today we are joined by Kat Salazar, CEO & Founder at weThink, to talk about her incredible career journey and how her unique life experiences led her to identify a huge problem with traditional approaches to education and inspired her to start weThink, an intelligence software platform built to help people and organizations thrive in team-based environments. 

Listen to discover how transferable skills directly impact the bottom line of every company and learn strategies for identifying the skills that optimize the way people learn and perform in teams. With advice to present and future revenue leaders on how to recognise and engage with soft skills to create better career progression and placement for employees, Kat shares her unique tactics for galvanising office culture, increasing employee performance and propelling sales teams forward. 

 

DEAR FUTURE CRO | by Culture Crunch x GrowthQ - Larry Satterfield

Hunters and Unicorns Productions

Dear Future CRO - A Culture Crunch and GrowthQ collaboration

Join the GrowthQ Community: www.growthq.co

The team at Hunters and Unicorns is excited to announce their pop-up podcast collaboration bought to you by Culture Crunch and GrowthQ. Titled ‘Dear Future CRO’, we talk to dynamic and diverse sales leaders and listen to their advice for tomorrow’s CROs.

“Remember that you're a CRO because you were a great sales leader and being a great sales leader is the first priority of the CRO. Don't forget the things about sales leadership that are important - building high performance teams, giving great sales coaching to the sales leaders, and talking to the customers of your organization. You are the top salesperson in the organization with access to every customer and every top salesperson so take advantage and understand what's working in your organization and what's not.”

Today we are joined by Larry Satterfield, retired Sales Leader at Jazz Networks, to talk about his professional career from learning the sales playbook back in the eighties, to becoming the Sales VP for companies like Dell, Tanberg, and Cisco. Leading with the philosophy of “lift as you climb”, Larry has solidified the science behind sales growth and competitiveness and is currently coaching CEOs and CROs across the industry, consistently creating opportunities and sponsors for the next generation of future revenue leaders to shine. Join in to listen to Larry’s expert opinion on how to transition from sales to leadership as well the value of mentorship and sponsorship, and what it can do for your company. Sharing his strategies for increasing diversity and minimising unconscious bias in the hiring process, Larry talks about his personal journey from the bottom to the top and offers valuable advice to young professionals looking to get into leadership positions.

DEAR FUTURE CRO | by Culture Crunch x GrowthQ - Paula Hansen

The team at Hunters and Unicorns is excited to announce their pop-up podcast collaboration bought to you by Culture Crunch and GrowthQ. 

Titled ‘Dear Future CRO’, we talk to dynamic and diverse sales leaders and listen to their advice for tomorrow’s CROs. 

“Dear future CRO, think about how you are contributing to building quality teams, investing in talent, investing in people's development, thinking about what it is that you need from your team of people, your leaders, your individual contributors to deliver on the result that you have because when you think about it in that concept, you'll do different things on a daily basis than you would if you're only thinking about your responsibility to deliver.” 

Today we are joined by Paula Hansen, President and Chief Revenue Officer at Alteryx. With over 25 years of experience in SaaS, we discuss Paula’s incredible career trajectory, including her transition from engineering into sales in the early years of her career and how she married her passion for knowledge in the technology space with interpersonal skills to forge a clear path to her current role. 

Listen to this episode to discover Paula’s experiences and personal journey through the ranks as she enlightens us with strategies for establishing a successful career in sales and offers her advice on how to cultivate mutually beneficial mentorship relationships, develop new sponsorship opportunities, remove unconscious bias across interview panels and nurture diversity of perspective in today’s sales environment.  

Sharing tactics and tips on how to scale your leadership career, Paula offers real-life examples from within the walls of world-class organisations to support and accelerate the careers of next generation revenue leaders.  

 

 

Hunters and Unicorns: Playbook Universe - Hash Choudhuri #004

Welcome to Hunters and Unicorns: The Sales Leaders Playbook.  

We’re here to showcase leaders within People and Culture and explore how the fastest growing tech companies are amplifying performances through increased employee engagement. 

By highlighting and celebrating the executives driving the evolution within the highest growth software companies in the world, we aim to uncover: 

• Why engagement is critical  
• The importance of diversity, equality, and inclusion  
• How to achieve true scale by attracting a diverse workforce of A Players 

Today we are joined by Hash Basu-Choudhuri, General Manager of EMEA at Cribl. In this episode, we discuss Hash’s history in the observability industry, his experiences as first man on the ground opening up EMEA operations at Cribl, and the business plan he executed against to introduce the 18-month-old startup to a brand-new market and territory in 2021.  

“Credibility, integrity, and trustworthiness are three things that I think will always stand you in good stead, whether you're in this business or any other business and I've never compromised on those three. You say what you're going to do and do what you're going to say. That's number one. Number two, it's the team, it's never about one man, it's about working together in unison and then, let’s be honest, it’s about the product.” 

Taking us from the early days of cutting his teeth at Sybase – to joining Splunk in the middle of an economic crisis in 2008 – through to his current adventure at Cribl and the entrepreneurial drive that led him to this role, Hash opens our eyes to the change mindset required to succeed in the fast-paced Observability sector as we discuss the benefits of his deep technical background and the key drivers that push him to accept new challenges and continually reinvent himself in different areas of business.  

With a variety of tools and techniques for propelling an upward career trajectory in the tech space, listen to this podcast to discover the foundations that enabled Hash to accomplish success as well as his strategies for building sustainable, repeatable, and high growth business. 

LIFE WORK ALIGNMENT | Culture Crunch - Corean Canty

LIFE WORK ALIGNMENT | Culture Crunch - Corean Canty

 

Welcome to Culture Crunch.

We’re here to showcase leaders within People and Culture and explore how the fastest growing tech companies are amplifying performances through increased employee engagement. By highlighting and celebrating the executives driving the evolution within the highest growth software companies in the world, we aim to uncover:

Why engagement is critical

The importance of diversity, equality, and inclusion

How to achieve true scale by attracting a diverse workforce of A Players

Today we are joined by Corean Canty, Executive Coach, Workplace Well-being Expert, and Former COO with over 20 years of experience in the Media and Marketing space, to discuss her thoughts on what it takes to create a good company culture in a digital world and find out why we need to place wellbeing at the centre of our organisations to attract and retain top talent, bring out the best in our employees and maximise business outcomes.

“Good company culture is life centred. We hear a lot about people first and human first and I am very much aligned with that but one thing I've recognized over many years is that, whether you're selling a product or a service, all businesses are in service of life, yet the people in the businesses usually end up last on the list.”

Whilst many assume that wellbeing is a "soft" issue and not a management problem to solve, Corean draws our attention to the impact of the pandemic on company culture and how it created a power shift from employer to employee and a new perspective of wellness in the workplace. Thanks to the pandemic, employees are now in the driving seat and employers need to be flexible, listen and talk to their people, and identify how to make their organisation a more appealing place to join and stay.

Citing the U.S. Surgeon General’s new guidance around strengthening workplace well-being, Corean takes a deep dive into why mental health and comprehensive wellbeing strategies need to be a top priority in contemporary workplaces and offers advice to leaders on how to create space for feedback and collaboration with their workforce to drive change, increase retention and positively impact performance.

In relation to her experience of hyper growth industries specifically, Corean highlights the need for business owners to address the “pace and pain gap” and harness the power of pause - the pressure to hit financial numbers may tempt many leaders to focus only on the balance sheet, but Corean believes that the key to peak performance is, paradoxically, a long and restful pause. She encourages leaders in organizations large and small to embrace the cyclical nature of business growth and incorporate time for reflection into their strategy to avoid burnout, diminishing returns and employee attrition.

With a variety of tools and techniques to help you transform your workplace culture, listen to this podcast to discover Corean’s strategies for supporting and facilitating a contemporary workforce, diminishing unconscious bias, and increasing productivity through communication, understanding and flexibility.

THE EVOLUTION OF LEADERSHIP | Culture Crunch - Harsha Jalihal

Welcome to Culture Crunch.

We’re here to showcase leaders within People and Culture and explore how the fastest growing tech companies are amplifying performances through increased employee engagement. By highlighting and celebrating the executives driving the evolution within the highest growth software companies in the world, we aim to uncover:

- Why engagement is critical

- The importance of diversity, equality, and inclusion

- How to achieve true scale by attracting a diverse workforce of A Players

Today we are joined by Harsha Jalihal, Chief people officer of MongoDB, to discuss her thoughts on what it takes to create a good company culture in a digital world and find out why we need to focus on the human element in this age of technology to increase productivity, reduce attrition and create better business outcomes.

“Every business problem in any company boils down to human behaviours. It's why so many CEOs and C level execs talk about how much time they spend dealing with people issues. Especially here at a MongoDB, we've got all the other raw material - we've got a great product, we've got a great business model, we've got all the things we need to run a successful business - when problems arise, it always boils down to human behaviour and that understanding of human behaviour is what we bring to the table. My goal is to get managers to learn how to do that well so they can then make decisions more independently and not rely on HR to tell them what to do.”

Sharing key leadership lessons with us in this interview, Harsha explains the ongoing cultural challenges being faced by organisations in the tech space due to the repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic. She describes how the melding of people's personal and professional lives has resulted in the development of a new leadership paradigm and emphasizes that the skills required for a future in tech are actually human skills: e.g. communication, empathy and cognitive thinking. As technology continues to change at an accelerated pace, Harsha believes that the key to good company culture is educating leaders and managers to understand human behaviour and set the tone from the top down. Outlining how high growth environments can have both positive and negative impacts on company culture, Harsha offers advice to forward thinking leaders on how to embrace change whilst preserving core company values.

“A lot of leaders, particularly in companies they have built or seen grow from ground up, tend to want to protect the culture, sometimes at all costs, and that's not necessarily a good thing. For me, it’s not about protecting it, it's about keeping the conversation about culture front and centre in your business strategy conversations.” With a variety of tools and techniques to help you transform your workplace culture, listen to discover Harsha’s future-proofed solutions to increasing revenue and productivity by bringing culture and core values to the centre of your business conversations.

ENGAGING A DISPERSED WORKFORCE | Culture Crunch - Jenny Kang

Welcome to Culture Crunch.

We’re here to showcase leaders within People and Culture and explore how the fastest growing tech companies are amplifying performances through increased employee engagement. By highlighting and celebrating the executives driving the evolution within the highest growth software companies in the world, we aim to uncover:

Why engagement is critical

The importance of diversity, equality, and inclusion

How to achieve true scale by attracting a diverse workforce of A Players

Today we are joined by Jenny Kang, talent partner at Battery Ventures, to discuss her thoughts on what it takes to create a good company culture in a dispersed digital world and find out how leaders can move beyond ticking the diversity checkbox and ensure they are achieving their goals of elevating DEI and creating better workplaces.

“I think that most companies that have a true commitment to diversity and inclusion understand that diverse workforces and diversity of thought and experiences lead to more innovation, stronger company culture, higher retention, and better business outcomes. But I think that we still need to hone that message correctly and we still have work to do to engage the market in the right way in terms of how we approach candidates and how we position these values.”

These days, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are at the forefront of hiring conversations, however, while many businesses are working toward equity and inclusion, minorities continue to face challenges in the tech industry. As someone from a diverse background who has transitioned into tech from a seemingly unrelated industry (before starting her career in executive recruiting, Jenny was a defence attorney), Jenny has first-hand experience of how the unique perspectives and experiences brought to the table by a diverse workforce can generate product innovation, better decision making, and stronger teams.

Offering strategies and tangible steps for business leaders across the tech landscape, Jenny talks us through how to drive real inclusion and diversity by redefining hiring profiles, taking a multithreaded approach to recruitment and being openminded to people from non-traditional backgrounds. Emphasising the need for authentic communication and genuine commitment to core company values, Jenny’s number one tip for leaders across all industries is that in order to infiltrate company culture, demonstrate a genuine commitment to DEI, and introduce new behaviours, change must come from the top-down.

Listen to discover how to demonstrate DEI mindfulness in your hiring process and why promoting these values throughout your organization is the only way forward. Jenny provides vital advice to help you connect and engage with a dispersed workforce as well as a variety of tools and techniques to help you transform your workplace culture and propel business growth.

The information contained herein is based solely on the opinion of Jenny Kang. This material is provided for educational purposes to cover industry or sector trends, and it is not, and may not be relied on in any manner as, legal, tax or investment advice or as an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy an interest in any fund or investment vehicle managed by Battery Ventures or any other Battery entity.